1. Technical Field
This invention relates to the field of network management, and more particularly, to geographically monitoring data paths within a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
The pervasiveness of electronic communication media such as the Internet has allowed individuals, companies, and organizations to take advantage of various electronic services and opportunities. Although technological innovations allow ever increasing amounts of data to be exchanged among users, network congestion still remains a problem. In general, user demand has outpaced the deployment of new technologies and resources.
One cause of network congestion has been the development of high bandwidth services such as voice, video, and other applications requiring large data throughput with regard to both inbound data and outbound data. The creation of handheld information appliances providing wireless network access further has aggravated network congestion.
While many users demand greater bandwidth for modern Internet services, other users have not embraced high bandwidth services. Accordingly, a network need not provide significant bandwidth to each user. Rather, the network need only provide increased bandwidth to those users utilizing broadband services or requiring faster access to information. Presently, however, users are provided with online access and pay for that access despite the user's individual amount of bandwidth usage.
Thus, in spite of the overall increase in demand for bandwidth in large networks, often there is a disproportionate utilization of bandwidth by users. For example, Internet users using more sophisticated equipment typically command a disproportionately larger amount of bandwidth as compared to other users. It is therefore necessary to better control and distribute bandwidth usage over these large networks.